The Key to a Happier Me: Opening the door to life's true treasures

By Nadia Wong

Do you ever find yourself longing for more love, peace and joy but feel powerless over your life and happiness? Or perhaps you feel lost or alone and need direction in life?

 

Then 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Conscious Dreams Publishing
• Release date: Aug 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781913674663

Book preview

The_Key_to_a_Happier_Me_cover.jpg

The KEY

to a Happier ME

OPENING THE DOORS TO LIFE’S TRUE TREASURES

By

Nadia Wong

Copyright © 2021: Nadia Wong

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be produced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

This book is for general information purposes and nothing contained in it is, or is intended to be construed as advice. It does not take into account your individual health, medical, physical or emotional situation or needs. It is not a substitute for medical attention, treatment, examination, advice, treatment of existing conditions or diagnosis and is not intended to provide a clinical diagnosis nor take the place of proper medical advice from a fully qualified medical practitioner.

First Printed in United Kingdom 2021

Published by Conscious Dreams Publishing

www.consciousdreamspublishing.com

Edited by Madison Whitehead and Elise Abram

Cover by Nadia Wong and Madison Whitehead

Key design by Maia Wong Astarita

Typeset by Oksana Kosovan

ISBN: 978-1-913674-66-3

Dedication

In loving memory of my beautiful niece Angelica Biancaniello.

28/11/1982 – 17/2/2021

Thank you for being a source of love and light in this world.

I dedicate this book to anyone who has ever felt unloved, unseen, unheard, unworthy, unappreciated or powerless over their life and happiness.

I see you, I hear you - I was you.

I’m not only here to remind you of the beautiful light that resides within, awakening you to the truth and beauty of who you really are; I’m also here as a source of love and inspiration to help you embrace the fact that your life truly matters.

Love is always the answer.

Much love

Nadia x

Contents

Introduction

DOOR #1… GRATITUDE

DOOR #2… KNOW YOUR SOUL

DOOR #3… LOVING RELATIONSHIPS

DOOR #4… BE YOUR OWN BEST FRIEND

DOOR #5... SELFISH SERVICE

DOOR #6... CREATING THAT DREAM FEELING

DOOR #7... THE POWER OF FAITH

DOOR #8... BALANCE AND HARMONY

DOOR #9... TRUST YOUR SOUL

DOOR #10... LIFE BEFORE DEATH

Conclusion

My Personal Promise

About the Author

Introduction

Have you ever had one of those serendipitous moments when life has called you away from what you are doing and led you on an exciting new path?

Well, that is how this book was born.

It was Christmas morning, 2018, when I woke up early, feeling exceptionally grateful for my life. I was on holiday in Sorrento with my family. My kids and husband were still asleep while I lay in bed, thinking about the journey I had taken to get me to where I was. The joy I felt was spilling over, and I knew there and then that I had to share that joy with whoever needed it. Only four years earlier, I had been completely lost in a pit of darkness and despair, wondering when the misery of my life would end. And yet, there I was, happier than I had ever been. Nothing in my outer world had changed, but I had. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that I was blessed with a joyful heart when there were millions of people all over the world still suffering and enduring their existence like I once had. So, I decided to share how I created my own joy.

I’m not a patient person, so I immediately set about creating a free five-day course that I could run online in the new year as a Christmas gift for my Facebook family.

I ran the course at the start of the year, which ended up being a great success. It opened the hearts and minds of all the people taking part, bringing about a lot of breakthroughs. Increasingly, I came to realise just how powerful this work was in creating positive change in the lives of others. So, it seemed natural to set about turning that course into something more to enable me to widen my reach and have an impact on many more lives.

Because I was in the middle of writing a book at the time, I decided that when the book was complete, I would begin creating a new one based on the foundations of my course, but the universe had other plans.

I’m the kind of person that likes to complete whatever I set out to do, and as such, I knew I had to finish the book on which I was working before I could start on this one. However, strange things started happening to me that undeniably led me in an alternative direction. I tried to ignore the whispers within my soul, but the signs were so powerful that I could ignore them no longer. I have been a spiritual person for most of my life, not so much religious, so it was clear that a force greater than myself was leading me to a higher cause. I knew within the depths of my soul that I had to listen, so I abandoned my current book and started on this one.

I hadn’t given the book’s title much thought, but as I began writing it, I considered what to name it. While reaching into my bag for my keys one day, I found a key. Not just any key, but the one on the cover of this book.

How on earth could that kind of antique-looking key just appear in my bag? I had never seen it before in my life, but there it was, in the inside pocket of my bag into which I reach every single day! I have been through all possible scenarios, trying to figure out how such a key could have appeared in my bag, but it is still a mystery to this day. My only explanation was that it had somehow fallen into my bag, but for it to be in an inside pocket that I reserved for my keys was mind-blowing. I felt that, perhaps, it meant that I was to call the book The Key, but I googled it and discovered that another book of that name already existed, so I let it go. As weird as it was, I thought perhaps I’d placed too much meaning on the ‘key’ incident, and I let my idea go. However, a week later, while I was out for my daily walk, right outside of a house in the village, I accidentally pulled out one of my gold earrings as I was removing my earphones. I felt it falling out, so I knew for sure that it couldn’t have gone far. I got down on my hands and knees and began searching for it there. My sister then called and said she was in the village for a walk, so she came to help me look for it. After 45 minutes, we decided to give up and let the mystery of the lost earring go. There was nothing strange there, but the next day, as I walked by that house, I decided to have another quick look. I glanced along the garden wall of the house to see if someone else had seen it and placed it on the wall at eye level. Can you guess what I saw? No, not my earring but another key, not hidden away, but sitting there in plain sight! I was a bit spooked when that happened, to be honest, and I asked the universe for a sign that I was on the right track. From that day until I completed my book, I saw a new white or light-coloured feather on my daily walk – not the same feather in the same place, but a different one every single day! To top that off, when I met with my friends for my birthday, without knowing my ‘key’ story, they had bought me a pendant with a heart and keyhole in it. That was it for me. Shivers went up and down my spine, and I just knew it was no coincidence. For me, there couldn’t have been a more prominent sign from the Universe unless, of course, God Almighty Himself had come down to tell me, face to face.

You may think I’m crazy, but I can assure you that I’m a normal(-ish) human being with my feet firmly on the ground. Still, I have to say that I believe this book wasn’t all my doing, I had Divine help!

***********

If you are still here, congratulations; welcome to the first day on your journey to living a happier life! I’m afraid I can’t wave a magic wand to help you, but I can give you this key to open the door to a happier life for yourself, one in which you are the pilot, the navigator, and the decision-maker. You can choose to fly beneath the clouds and endure the ever-changing weather or soar above them to clear blue skies, regardless of what is happening in the atmosphere below. You are the creator of your own life and your own story.

Your happiness is in your hands, not anyone else’s. You have the power to create the kind of life you desire, whatever that is. The choice is all yours. Your circumstances do not determine the quality of your life. You do!

Lasting happiness doesn’t just happen by chance. It is made, just like a delicious cake is made. We need the right ingredients and method before getting to work on our creation. We can decide to create whatever we want – be a cake or the lives of our dreams – but it takes conscious awareness and action to get started, so let’s begin today with a single step.

One quote I use time and time again is that of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: ‘The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.’

What he says is so true, and it makes perfect sense. In order to go anywhere in life, we first have to move forward, even just one step in the right direction. We can’t just sit around and expect a wonderful life to land in our laps. We have to take steps towards it to live, love, and create that wonderful life for ourselves.

Each step we take in this book will be a step closer to understanding how to create a happier life for ourselves, but reading about it alone is not enough – we must take action!

It’s not what we know that makes us successful in our endeavours; it’s what we do with our knowledge that counts. I’m here to show you the doors to life’s true treasures. I have walked through them myself, but you will also have to step through to claim your own life and joy. I can’t do it for you.

This book contains ten doors that, when opened, will allow more love and light into your soul, making your life brighter, enabling you to see, feel, and embrace life’s true treasures. Once inside, you will learn something new about who you are and the actions you can take to ignite the light within your heart. It is a journey that will take us deep within and that we cannot rush. It is not a race to get to the finish line or the end of this book, it is about gaining a clear understanding of who we are as individuals. So, we have to take time to ponder each concept and be completely open and honest with ourselves as we answer each question. Taking one step at a time means we can consistently move forward in all areas of life that will get us to where we want to be, whether we are working on our bodies, minds, or souls. The joy of life is in the journey, taking in new experiences, meeting new people, and enjoying time with those we love, and not racing to get to the end. There is so much more to life than enduring pain and suffering. It is a journey of discovery and adventure to accurately understanding who we are and how we can make a difference in this world.

We are all meant to be here – right here, right now – and we are all blessed with free will. We can either choose to endure the time we have on this earth and make do with what we have, or seek out the treasures of life and truly live. We reap what we sow. Therefore, we get out what we put in. We can only harvest happiness if we first plant the seeds, but it also takes time and patience to reap the rewards.

When we learn how to play a musical instrument, it takes time and consistent practice. We may find it challenging to begin with and consider giving it up as we wonder if it will ever feel natural to us, but in time, we become competent enough to play with ease and flow.

If we apply the same principle to life using this book as a guide, our new way of thinking will become natural and flow with ease. It’s about putting what we learn into practice daily, taking the time to learn how to play the beautiful instrument of life.

Think of it as a fascinating adventure into your mind, heart, and soul that will help support you on your journey through life as you take the scenic route to admire all of the breathtaking views as you go.

We often go through life at superspeed without taking the time to look around, but in doing so, we miss out on all the beauty surrounding us, so we have to enjoy the ride as we rediscover who we are to understand our true worth.

To create anything extraordinary in life, we must first have a vision of it in our minds. All inventions and engineering breakthroughs begin with a thought. The Wright brothers had the foresight before they were able to create the first powered aircraft, but they also had to do the work and fail time and time again before they succeeded to make their first flight in 1903. It wasn’t a one-day, one-week, or one-year project – it was a work in progress with the determination to realise their vision. The Wright brothers knew it was possible, and they never gave up. How do I know this? Because they succeeded. Without believing in their process, they would not have spent seven years making it work. The same goes for every invention ever created. They all began with an idea in the mind of someone who followed through. Imagination alone doesn’t make them inventors – it’s what they do with their thoughts and how they put their ideas into practice that transformed them into a reality. And the same goes for us.

For us to create happiness, we need to visualise joyful versions of our lives in our hearts and minds and take the necessary, consistent actions to get us there.

Before we begin opening the doors to some of life’s true treasures, let’s first understand where you are right now. Are you content with where you are in mind, body, and spirit?

When we set our satellite navigation systems, we first need to know the starting point so we can work out how to get to our destination from where we are. So, where are you?

By answering the following questions openly and honestly, you will be able to gauge where you are, not only as a starting point but also as a reference to look back to on this journey to see how far you have come.

If you find yourself back at the starting point, you will know that you are moving in circles and have strayed off course, which will remind you to re-align yourself with your soul. We all get lost from time to time – that isn’t the problem. The challenge is knowing what direction to take, whether to keep moving or give up and stay where we are. The destination isn’t where the joy is – it’s through moving forward one step at a time, growing, learning, and connecting with the very source of our love, one day at a time, with a peaceful soul, knowing we are exactly where we should be.

So, please answer the following questions honestly:

•On a scale from one to ten, how happy are you in your daily life at the present moment (one being you are desperately unhappy and feel as if you have no control over your happiness, and ten being that you are one of the happiest people you know, and you understand that your happiness is due to your state of mind)?

•What number do you want that to be and why?

............

............

............

•On a scale from one to ten, how much time and effort are you willing to put into getting yourself to the level that you want to be (one being as little time as possible as this is not important to you, and ten being that you know this is essential inner work that will transform your life and that of your family, so you will give and do all that it takes)?

•Now, rate, on a scale from one to ten, the quality of each area of your life listed below (one being it is in desperate need of change, ten being that you are happy in this area and it needs no improvement):

•My personal relationship

•My family

•My work

•My health

•My finances

•My personal fulfilment

•Which three of the above are the main priorities in your life at this moment in time? Write them down in order of importance, and explain why they take precedence over the other areas.

1. ...........

2. ...........

3. ...........

•How much time do you spend day-to-day on your digital devices, watching TV, or doing similar mindless activities that distract you from concentrating on your personal growth and wellbeing? How does that make you feel?

...........

...........

•What do you hope to gain from reading and applying the teachings of this book to your life?

...........

...........

•What do you truly want from life?

...........

...........

•On a scale from one to ten, how much love do you have for the person you are right now (one being that you hate yourself and don’t feel you are of any value, and ten being that you believe you are here for a purpose, and you feel comfortable saying that you love yourself as a human being)?

DOOR #1…

GRATITUDE

Happiness Flows with An Attitude of Gratitude!

One of the greatest lessons I have learned in life is the power of gratitude. It is an essential step towards living a happier life and is the answer to dealing with most of life’s challenges. Even in times of great difficulty, we can always find something for which to be grateful if we truly look for it. It reminds us of what and who we have in our lives at any given time, giving us the hope and strength to keep moving and keep loving. Being grateful for all that we have and are without comparing ourselves to others allows us to see the value in each day and in each person that crosses our path.

Most of us go through life waiting to be happy, expecting to reach fulfilment when we find our one true love, when we have more money, when we have comfortable houses, when we have children, when we retire, when we lose weight, and so on, but now is the time to be happy!

No one knows how much time we have here on this earth. We could live on for many years, but we could just as swiftly go tomorrow. So, let’s not waste a single minute of it and be grateful for every day that we can spend with those we love.

Gratitude is the very essence of happiness. It’s about focusing on what we do have instead of what we don’t. Whatever we put our energy into expands. Therefore, when we are focused on good things, more good things will appear.

I do this little awareness experiment with each of my clients and write about it in every one of my books because it is so powerful, and I’d like to do it with you now. Whether you have done this in the past or not, it is always good to remind yourself just how significant your focus and awareness is to your life.

Wherever you are right now, for ten seconds, take a good look around you and seek out everything that is the colour brown.

Now, once you’ve got a clear picture of all the brown you know is around you, close your eyes and say out loud all the things you saw that were red or blue.

Please, don’t read on any further without doing this experiment. It will only take a minute, but the effects can last a lifetime, and they will change your whole perception of life for the better. Don’t just take my word for it – you must experience this for yourself for you to reap the benefits.

Now that you have done the experiment, how did you do? How much red or blue did you see? If you are in a room you know well, then you may have been able to name a few things from memory. Now, take the time to look around carefully, and you will see all the red and blue you failed to see before. It may be in a picture, a painting, a book cover, on a label, or in the pattern of a cushion – the more closely you look, the more you will find, but why didn’t you see it before? It’s because you weren’t looking for red and blue, but brown.

This is what life is like.

When we go through life focused on all the beauty and that which is right we will see exactly that. Alternatively, if we are focused on our problems and what is wrong, then that is what we will see, no matter how many beautiful things are surrounding us.

I did this experiment with a client, and she failed to see the big red door sitting right in front of her. How on earth did she manage to miss it? It couldn’t have been more obvious, but she was simply unaware of it. It may sound crazy, but this is how the majority of us go through life. We tend to focus on what is wrong and not on what is right.

As children, we are not taught how to think, so we don’t realise the power we have over our thoughts and our lives. We were asked ‘What’s wrong?’ time and time again as children, but how often were we asked, ‘What’s right?’

By integrating gratitude into our lives, our hearts begin to open as we focus on how truly blessed we are already for having a home, a family, a bed to sleep in, eyes to see, legs to walk on, and so on. So many people do not have these blessings, yet we take what we have for granted. Once we open our hearts and minds and truly appreciate the small, seemingly insignificant stuff, happiness will begin to flow in abundance.

My path to happiness began with a daily gratitude practice, which ultimately changed my life. It took me from a place of despair and pain to discovering the key to an abundance of happiness. It is my go-to place in my heart and mind that sustains me on a daily basis, and more so when times get tough. We would be foolish to think that once we attain an understanding of how to live a happy life, we’ll be in a state of constant joy. We are and always will be works in progress. Our good daily habits can sustain us, but if we begin to adopt bad daily habits – which is just as easy to do – we can lose our ways again. It is paramount that we consistently apply good habits in all areas of our lives to sustain our sense of peace and wellbeing.

We desperately work on bettering our external world to improve our lives, but nothing outside of ourselves can bring long-lasting love, peace, and joy within.

Imagine if your car wasn’t running smoothly and kept breaking down. Would you buy it a new sound system or treat it to some fancy alloy wheels to make it perform better? Would you give it a makeover in the hope of it running reliably again? No, that would make no sense whatsoever. To get your car up and running at optimum levels again, the first thing you would do is look under the hood to see what the problem is, right? We first have to look at the inner workings of the car to understand what is going on and then find a solution. We can’t maintain the health of our engines by seeking quick fixes on the exterior. Yet, in our own lives, so many of us think that changing our outer appearances will solve the problems that come from deep within.

Only by opening the hood of our minds and hearts and looking deep within ourselves are we able to identify what prevents us from thriving in life. When we understand what is going on, we can then find solutions and take the necessary steps to get ourselves running at full power by diving inwards and tapping into our souls.

We all know what gratitude means: giving thanks for and appreciating what we already have. But do we understand the power of gratitude and its effect on our lives? I know I didn’t. It was when I began writing about and wholly filling my spirit with that for which I was grateful that I realised its abounding power in creating a life of joy. Many aspects of life changed because I focused on what was good about myself, my life, and my surroundings. I started to see all the outstanding people with whom I was surrounded instead of seeking what was wrong.

In the Bible, it says, Seek and ye shall find, and from my experience, that is accurate. When we look for what’s wrong, we find it, because we are consciously seeking problems, but when we look for the good in people, things, and places, we find exactly that.

Two people can go to the same event together, one can love it, and the other hate it, but that says nothing about the event itself. It all depends on what each person looks to gain from the event. For example, imagine going to your partner or spouse’s family’s party, and you don’t really want to be there. You can do one of two things: you can decide that it will be fun before you enter even though you really don’t want to be there, or you can resign to having a terrible time. If you decide to enjoy it, you will find people and things you like, and you will have fun. Alternatively, if you are dead set on not enjoying yourself, then guess what? You won’t enjoy yourself. When I first began practising gratitude, I had to work really hard at finding things for which to be grateful (other than my children, of course). I had allowed life to get me down, and I found myself at war with the world and with myself. I had been so focused on what was missing in my life, everything I wanted but could not have, that I had blinded myself from all I already had. Previously, I had managed to dig myself into a dark pit of fear, anxiety, and despair in which, quite frankly, I had lost my will to live. I was in a hopeless and horrible place